Grappell’s QUADRANGLE To Premiere at Sundance

AFS Filmmaker member Amy Grappell’s short documentary, QUADRANGLE, will be making its world premiere in the Shorts Competition at Sundance Film Festival 2010 and having European premiere at the Rotterdam Int. Film Festival.

Grappell, a director, writer, producer, actress, and casting director, has been active in the Austin film community for the last decade. Grappell wrote and directed LIGHT FROM THE EAST (2005), which premiered at SXSW, and starred in and produced the indie narrative feature SHADY GROVE (1996) that also premiered at SXSW before doing the international film festival circuit. Grappell serves on the Austin Film Society Docs in Progress committee and is the recipient of an AFS Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund Grant (09) for QUADRANGLE. Read more about the film from The Austin Chronicle >>

Grappell’s (20min.) documentary QUADRANGLE takes an unconventional look at two ‘conventional’ couples that swapped partners and lived in a group marriage in the early 70s, hoping to pioneer an alternative to divorce and the way people would live in the future.

Grappell’s project began when she decided to interview her parents as part of her research process for writing a narrative feature script based on her experience growing up in a group marriage in the early 70’s. An earlier version of the piece was selected for the prestigious “New American Talent 2009” art exhibit at Arthouse at the Jones Center in Austin, TX. Hamza Walker, guest curator for NAT and director of education at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society, describes the piece:

“Amy’s skill as a seasoned documentary filmmaker serves her well. It is a superb piece that stands out in any context. — Substantial, serious, compelling, deeply moving and formally beautiful. In addition to the story, it is an outstanding piece of portraiture.   Although many artists flirt with documentary strategies, they are often unwilling to engage their subject directly. The result is dilettantism especially when it comes to an autobiographical work let alone one with QUADRANGLE’s complexity. One’s parents are the ultimate subject matter, meaning you really have to have the chops to pull off a work exploring their personal lives.”

Wayne Alan Brenner, reviewing QUADRANGLE in the Austin Chronicle describes the short: “a short and jewel like work of cinema, 20 minutes’ worth of fine camerawork in which two separate interviews are arranged, with embellishments of still photography, into a dynamic diptych that often displays both interviews simultaneously, their timing set to provide complementary silences and dialogue.”